


What are you doing right now?

by orphan_account



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Facebook, Gen, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2114190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Checking on old Facebook friends for nostalgia's sake isn't healthy for anyone</p>
            </blockquote>





	What are you doing right now?

Jay never really used Facebook in 2006. Alex had bugged him into joining, but he only really did it to make Alex shut up about it. He wasn’t really one for social networking.

After Alex moved away, he barely looked at it. He just didn’t see the point. But it was 4am, and Jay was alone in a hotel room, sick of watching seemingly endless footage. He figured checking out Facebook couldn’t hurt.

It took him far too long to remember what email and password combination he had used 5 years ago. When he finally got in, he checked his profile. Five friends. Alex, a few people from his old class, and a girl he used to like.  
Underwhelming.

He was avoiding looking at Alex’s profile, because of the awful, sinking feeling he got in his stomach the second he saw his old friend’s name. He scrolled down his own wall, and found old posts.

“You shouldn’t have come over tonight.”  
September 2006.

Jay knew he had no way of verifying, but he was sure that was the night he got the first batch of tapes.  
He kept scrolling, trying to push out the memories of how sick Alex had looked that night. He had looked haunted.

Nothing from August. He remembered Alex avoided him for a few weeks before he got the tapes. That must have been then.

A few messages throughout July, demanding he “pick up [his] damn phone” and asking why he didn’t get emails from Facebook and asking if he ever checked his wall because they really, really needed to film that day and obviously Jay was pretty bad at picking up his phone in 2006.

April, May, and June were a little more light-hearted, Alex spamming his wall with in-jokes, reminding him of stupid things they had done in class, excitedly bouncing ideas for Marble Hornets off his wall, mainly just to have them written down, by the looks of things.

He sighed heavily. It dawned on him that five years had passed since they had been friends.

He clicked on Alex’s profile, trying desperately not to think about what he was doing. He wasn’t sure if he was hoping to find recent activity from him or not. If there was any, it might be insight into what was going on with him, and he wouldn’t have to watch Alex’s every single waking moment on tape any more.  
On the other hand, he didn’t know if he was ready to confront him again.

The page loaded slowly (terrible hotel wireless), and his stomach lurched as the latest status update crawled onto the screen.  
"transferring tomorrow. Won’t be able to keep in touch. Not logging on any more. Please don’t try to find me." - September 2006.  
Jay’s chest felt tight. He didn’t know exactly how he felt. Numb, mainly.

In retrospect, he should have done something at the time. People don’t just move halfway across the country for no reason. They don’t act like that about a bunch of tapes.

Normal people don’t forget about their friend giving them tapes, acting weird and leaving state, only to remember 3 years later.

Not for the first time, Jay felt a little dumb. He should have contacted Alex sooner.

He kept reading old status updates. He could place a few statuses from when Marble Hornets was being filmed, even if he didn’t remember them directly.  
As he got further back, it was more of the Alex he used to know. He was reluctant to admit that he missed him, all considered. But he did. They had been really close. He kept forgetting that, thanks to Alex’s radical personality change, and everything Jay had went through trying to find him. And everything he’d seen Alex do.  
He went back up to the top of the page and looked at Alex’s photographs. There were a few pictures of them in class, a couple of them hanging out at his house.

To be entirely accurate, Jay missed having any friends. He was very acutely aware of the fact that he was totally alone in the world right then. He had cut off all contact with his friends. He had not spoken to his family for a year and a half. Strangers on the internet just wanted to watch him suffer. They didn’t want to make friends. They just wanted answers to a mystery that didn’t even involve them. That was all they ever asked about. As if he was keeping secrets from them, as if he wasn't telling them everything he knew as soon as he knew it.  
Nobody ever asked how he was. How he was coping.

He was very alone. And it was, ultimately, Alex’s fault.

He stared at a photograph of the two of them, in class, being idiots with some cameras.

He needed to hear a familiar voice. He needed someone to just talk. He needed to not be alone. He tried to convince himself that the old Alex was still there, somewhere.

Without really thinking about it, he picked up his phone.

"Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of Alex Kralie, I’m not answering the phone right now. Please leave your name and a number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can."

He never would.


End file.
